Consumer loyalty in the online environment

Abstract

The importance of consumer loyalty to the web sites has long been known. Researchers have introduced some models to explain the antecedents of and the factors that affect e-loyalty. Within the scope of this study, the research of Srinivasan, Anderson, and Ponnavolu‘s (2002) is chosen and modified by adding C (Cost Reduction) as a variable. The of this thesis was to examine the relation between e-loyalty and its antecedents. For this purpose, the data has been collected via an online survey from 328 participants, and has been tested through descriptive, reliability, correlation, cluster analyses, and ANOVA analyses aiming to reach findings. Results of this study show the antecedents of e-loyalty and describes the relations between site types and subtypes of loyalty and the antecedents of e-loyalty seperately. Generally, overall loyalty tendency of the people has been found to be low, however their tendency to be emotionally loyal to a web site is higher than to be rational loyal as expected. Consumers show different loyalty tendencies which can be summarized in three groups, ''Loyal Friends'', ''Rational Advocates'', ''Independent Switchers''. On the other hand, differences based on the web site types have also been analyzed.